Baking bread for household purposes is a relatively complicated, time consuming, work intensive and messy business. By the fact that the quality of the bread to a certain extent depends on the fermentation time and a fermentation procedure performed under correct conditions, which takes a relatively long time, there are few people that have the privilege of eating fresh home-made bread for breakfast.
Through U.S. Pat. No. 3,194,185 there is previously known a method of manually mixing and kneading the ingredients of a pizza dough in a flat, flexible bag, e.g. a plastic bag. This is designed so that the dough, which is rolled out in the bag, has the circular shape of the bag. Further the bag is designed so that one of its sides can be torn away, so that the rolled-out dough easily can be placed on a baking-plate. This method suggests a solution to the problem of the messy procedure of mixing and kneading the dough, but it does not give any insight of how it would be possible to automatically produce bread.
Through U.S. Pat. No. 4,234,605 there is known a bread baking apparatus, in which the same vessel is used for mixing the ingredients and kneading the dough. Further the fermentation as well as the baking of the dough takes place in this vessel in the dough preparation and baking station. This baking apparatus in fact is only suited for relatively liquid doughs and since neither the vessel, the dough preparation tools nor the lid of the vessel will be cleaned between the dough kneading procedure and the baking, dough adhered to these tools will be burned and stuck during the baking procedure, which on one hand can influence the taste of the baked product and on the other hand makes the cleaning considerably more difficult. The baking apparatus also requires relatively complicated equipment with special driving means for raising and lowering the vessel to and from the kneading and mixing positions.